Windows 7: Seagate CEO Explains Why Flash Won’t Replace Magnetic HDDs Soon

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Maximum PC | Seagate CEO Explains Why Flash Won

I bet Kodak had a similar point of view regarding film. They are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy I believe.

I thought that, too, at first. But if you read the interview it's interesting because apparently there is no way to produce enough flash drives to store all the information available on earth:

Maybe I think of SSDs more generally as non spinning storage devices. I remember the days of 20MB HDDs. The idea of a 3 TB domestically available HDD was considered beyond the physics of magnetic storage. Ok rotating storage has a future for mass storage for quite a while. But I think we are talking very large database storage.

I'd like to consider SSD in future as standing for fast Static Storage Device be it NAND gate type technology or optical. I can't see the market for this disappearing.

Hi there
at least it wasn't a "Gartner's" prediction.

If Gartner said the same thing I'd sell ANY stock I had in Seagate etc etc. Those people are HOPELESS in prediction -- about 50% correct -- same as you'd get with a random guess. !!!

Of course what else do you expext SEAGATE to say--"We are in a dying Industry People -- Please do not invest any more money" --Of course not.

As more and more people try SSD's and like them demand will grow and the technology will develop (even Seagate will join the party at some time) to make them large capacity and affordable. It might take a while but IT WILL COME un some form or other.

Incidentally there are also ENVIROMENTAL reasons for using SSD's too -- less power requirements, less "Rare Earth" and toxic Heavy metal requirements so a cleaner manufacturing process etc.

(Look at Kodak failing to spot the digital photography trend, and probably SONY isn't too long left for this world either --at least in its present form).

Predicting Future technology or even the use of it is always a dangerous game -- remember once Texting was only provided since the Mobile operators had spare capacity and didn't know what to do with it -- nobody even dreamed of the amount of use it would get.

Music studios restricting output to CD thought they had the Music Industry in their hands for ever in spite of an onslaught by MD's (Minidiscs) to make music more portable.

Then as we all know the Ipod appeared and changed the whole nature of how people listen, buy and store music (and probably make it too).

Same with Movies -- Better Bandwidth, more people with large LCD screens -- so people want this at HOME rather than expensive trips to a movie theater where you don't have any control of how you play / watch the movie. People like Netflix etc have got this more or less correct assuming the Babdwidth can sustain it.

Satellite TV and "On Demand" TV has shaken the standard providers to the core -- who cares if channel X and channel Y are showing things yoy want to watch at the same time -- just RECORD both and watch them at your leisure (and fast forward the commercials too).

Cheers
jimbo

i'm still waiting for ssd prices to go down so i can use it as a boot drive and install a couple programs on it and install my games on my current hdd. Hopefully in the future they are a lot cheaper and then there wont be a need for hdd and i can install all my stuff on a big enough ssd.Anyways as for now i'm playing the sit and watch the prices and wait game.

Agree, but the key phrase is "take a while." There's simply no way flash drives will come close to matching the capacity of mechanical drives for decades - it's the same brick wall Moore's Law is running into. Beyond a certain point, we just don't how to shrink and cram more stuff in tighter spaces. I'm sure the marketplace will figure this out, or come up with a totally new technology, but right now that is really far off.

Hi there

even today we *Could* triple the capacity of all drives be they SSD's or spinners without a single change of technology -- with fast hardware why not build compression (lossless) into the storage -- the user will just see the data in "plain text" while the hardware will compress / decompress the data.

The compression mechanism can be built into the firmware.
Things like WORD / EXCEL etc will compress up to 90% and most music / multimedia can be LOSSLESSLY compressed decently too.

We need faster hardware for this to work but the firmware of the spinners / SSD's could have fast RAM speed type caches for doing the compression / decompression.

Mechanisms and systems in the future will certainly appear (and I don't believe it will be too long).

SSD's in their present form might take a geological age (if ever) to catch up capacity wise with spinners -- but there is a lot of newer technology out there in Labs just awaiting the need to move it beyond Research stage into real development.

Mabe bubble storage with new technology might come back into consideration - certinly there's a lot of development going on into the next generation of Mass storage.

Cheers
jimbo

There's plenty of time before Mechanical drive makers have to hit the panic button.

Hi there
you can still buy FLOPPY Discs and a USB floppy disk adapter if you want .

Cheers
jimbo